LOGINDaisy Reed gave up everything for Seth Ford her career, her ambition, her sense of self to become the perfect wife. On their third anniversary, she comes home early and finds him with her stepsister Beth. In the confrontation that follows, cornered on the stairs, she’s shoved. She doesn’t survive the fall. She wakes up five years earlier, twenty-three years old, on the morning of a choice she made without thinking twice the first time. This time, she thinks twice. She turns down the job Seth wants her to take. She keeps the strategy and analytics career she once buried for him. And when Seth’s biggest rival, Harvey Carlos, offers her a position at Carlos Holdings, she takes it not for revenge, not yet, just to never be small again. She doesn’t know Harvey has secrets of his own: he loved her in silence for years, said nothing, and died in a reckless accident the night he learned she was gone. He doesn’t know why the new hire unsettles him so completely, or why grief he’s never earned keeps surfacing when she’s near. As Daisy rebuilds herself into someone Seth can no longer control and Beth can no longer overshadow, old resentments curdle into open war. Beth, desperate to reclaim the spotlight, makes a play for Harvey and is publicly, humiliatingly rejected, a wound that pushes her and Seth toward something far more dangerous than gossip. Somewhere between boardrooms and unspoken history, Daisy and Harvey are drawn together despite everything working against it. But the truth neither of them has said aloud that they’ve both already died once for this is coming, and it will force them to decide if a love that’s already cost one life is worth risking.
View MoreDaisy’s POV
It’s our third year anniversary and I couldn’t wait to surprise him, I had spent the entire afternoon trying to look beautiful for him I had gotten the navy silk dress in size 3XL which was three times bigger than the mannequin display, and I received looks for it, even the sales person looked at me weirdly, that’s what I get for being a plus sized lady. But my excitement died down when I walked into our home and I could see clothes scattered all over the floor trailing the stairs all the way to my master bedroom. My breath hitched and my heart beating so loudly I could hear it myself, I heard the sounds moaning, “yes Seth just like that”. No! He wouldn’t, she wouldn’t. I know that voice I can recognize it even in my sleep Beth my step sister with shaky hands I slowly open the door and the sight before me shattered me, my husband thrusting and fucking non other than my step sister on our matrimonial bed on our anniversary. I saw Beth’s dark hair first. It was spread across my pillow, the one with the pale ivory pillowcase I had ironed that morning. Her head was thrown back, mouth was open in a moan. Seth was above her, bare-backed, hips driving forward in the same deep rhythm he had once used with me. The wet sound of their bodies filled the room the sheets I had chosen were twisted around their legs. For a moment my mind simply refused to understand. Then Beth’s eyes opened and locked on mine. There was no panic in them. Only a flash of surprise that quickly melted into something brighter and uglier satisfaction. She did not push him off, she did not scramble for the sheet. She watched me while my husband continued to thrust inside her, and the corner of her mouth curved like she had been waiting for this exact audience. Seth must have felt the change in her because he looked over his shoulder. The color drained from his face so fast I thought he might be sick. He still didn’t pull out right away. “Daisy,” he said, voice rough. “It’s not…this isn’t…” The bakery box slipped from my fingers. Lemon tarts spilled across the hardwood in a soft, ridiculous mess. The sweet scent rose up between us like a joke. I heard my own voice, thin and strange. “Get off her.” Beth laughed. The sound was bright and cruel. “God, look at your face. You really had no idea, did you?” Seth finally moved, pulling out of her and reaching for the sheet as if modesty mattered now. “Beth, shut up. Daisy, baby, listen to me…” “Eight months,” Beth said, sitting up without bothering to cover her breasts. “He’s been fucking me for eight months. While you were cooking his dinners and smiling at his horrible mother and pretending you were enough.” Eight months. The words hit harder than any slap. Eight months of late nights he blamed on work, eight months of me warming plates and telling myself not to be the nagging fat wife. Eight months of swallowing the lipstick marks, the distant eyes, the way his hands had stopped lingering on my waist. I had made myself so small for him. I had given up the strategy job offers, the analytics career I had actually been good at, every piece of the future that belonged only to me. I had let his family treat me like unpaid help I had smiled when they joked about my appetite and my size. I had believed him every single time he promised it would get better. And he had been busy fucking my stepsister for eight months I felt my heart crack and hot tears streamed down my face. Something hot and black tore loose in my chest. I moved without deciding to my hands found Beth’s hair and yanked. She shrieked, clawing at my arms. Seth cursed and grabbed me from behind, hauling me backward. My hip slammed into the dresser. Pain shot down my leg, but it was distant compared to the roaring in my ears. “Stop it!” Seth shouted. “You’re hysterical!” “Hysterical?” My voice cracked into something raw. “You’re fucking my stepsister in our bed on our anniversary and I’m hysterical?” Beth scrambled off the bed, yanking the sheet around herself. Her eyes were bright with malice and excitement. “He never loved you, Daisy. He settled I mean look at you and Look at me. It was always going to end like this.” I lunged for her again. Seth’s arms locked around my waist like iron. He was still half-naked, still smelling of sex and Beth’s perfume, and he was manhandling me toward the hallway as if I were the problem that needed to be removed. “Enough,” he snarled against my ear. “You’re embarrassing yourself.” We struggled at the top of the long marble staircase. The same stairs I had cleaned on my hands and knees because his mother said the housekeeper never got the corners right. My heel caught the edge of the runner. I twisted, trying to wrench free, trying to hit him, trying to make him feel even a fraction of the pain splitting me open. Seth’s hands tightened on my upper arms. Then he shoved. It was not a push to create space. It was not an accident. It was the full, furious force of a man who wanted the screaming inconvenience gone. The world tilted violently. My shoulder hit the first step with a sickening crack. Then my hip then the back of my head. Pain detonated in white-hot bursts. I rolled, over and over, unable to stop, the chandelier above the foyer spinning like a blurred star. Somewhere far away Beth was screaming and Seth was shouting my name in a voice that already sounded like performance. I hit the marble floor of the foyer on my back. The impact drove the last of the air from my lungs. Warm wetness spread beneath my skull in a widening pool. My legs would not move, I couldn’t feel my arms. Every breath was a shallow, wet rattle. Seth’s face appeared above me, pale and stunned for a moment I saw real fear in his eyes. Then something else calculating began to settle over it, the same look he wore when a business deal started going wrong and he needed to rewrite the narrative. Beth hovered behind him, the sheet clutched to her chest, her earlier triumph cracking into panic now that blood was pooling on the expensive floor. I tried to speak. I wanted to tell him I hated him. I wanted to tell Beth she would never be free of what she had done I wanted to say that I had loved him so completely I had destroyed myself for the privilege, and this was how he repaid it. Only a choked, bloody sound came out. The edges of the room darkened. The chandelier blurred. Cold began to creep in from my fingers and toes, moving inward like a tide. Three years of devotion. Three years of making myself the fat girl who stayed, the fat girl who forgave, the fat girl nobody had ever truly chosen only kept because she was useful and quiet and grateful. And this was the end. Seth’s hand touched my cheek, already trembling with the story he would tell. Beth’s voice floated somewhere above me, thin and frightened. The darkness pressed closer, heavy and absolute. I did not want to die. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted to live long enough to make them regret every second. But the dark did not care what I wanted. It simply took me.Harvey’s POVThe car door shut and the noise of the ballroom died like someone had cut a wire.Daisy sat in the opposite corner of the back seat, crimson silk pooled around her, the slit fallen open showing off her thick smooth thighs. She had not looked at me since we left the steps. She had not moved away either. That was the only reason I had not already apologized for the hand I put on her waist in front of half the city’s money.I had told them we were dating.And I had not asked her first.The driver pulled into traffic. Rain streaked the glass. For three blocks I let the silence stand, because didn’t want to say anything too soon. Her eyes came to me, dark and unreadable. “You told them we were dating.”“Yes I didn’t like the things they were saying and I saw an opportunity”.“You didn’t ask”.“Yes, I’m sorry.”She seems so different from the Daisy I knew and was no longer the intimated woman I once knew. “Seth will not stop,” I said. “Neither will Beth. What they did in t
Daisy’s POVThey cut through the crowd like they owned the marble.Seth first. Navy suit. That familiar smile already dying on his mouth. Beth on his arm in silver, bright and sharp, the same look she had worn in another life when she watched me bleed on a foyer floor.Harvey’s shoulder shifted half an inch in front of me. Not enough to make a scene. Enough that I felt it.“Daisy.” Seth’s voice was pleasant the way a blade is pleasant before it moves. “What are you doing here?”People nearby had already begun to give looks and act like they’re not listening. I felt the attention gather anyway, warm and hungry.“Working,” I said.His gaze flicked to Harvey, then back to me, and something ugly settled in it. “With Harvey Carlos of all people.”Harvey did not speak. He did not have to the quiet of him was its own answer.Seth laughed once, short, disbelieving. “You disappear on me. You take some little office job. And a week later you’re walking into this room on his arm.” His eyes dro
The Room That TurnedHarvey’s POVI had prepared myself for Daisy Reed in work clothes.But I had not prepared myself for this.She stepped out of the car in the crimson dress and the whole entrance seemed to lose its sound. Off-the-shoulder silk. A slit that cut up one full thigh like a dare. Hair swept up, mouth painted the same red as the dress, body held with a stillness that was not apology. For a second I forgot how to breathe in a way that would have embarrassed me if I had been capable of feeling anything except the hit of her.I had sent the dress because I refused to let her walk into that room in something chosen to make her smaller. I had not sent it expecting her to wear it like a verdict.She did.Her name left my mouth before I had decided to speak it. Daisy, low, careful The only word that had ever felt dangerous in my mouth.She told me I had sent a dress. I told her she had chosen to wear it. When she said it fit, I almost answered with the truth.I know because I ha
The Dress He ChoseDaisy’s POVI replayed the invitation the whole way home.Harvey Carlos had stood under the awning in the rain and asked me to walk into a room Seth Ford would have sold his name to enter. A plus-one, his plus-one I had said yes before I could talk myself smaller.That fact still felt like a live wire under my skin.The studio looked tighter than it had that morning. I opened the closet and stared at the truth of it. Black trousers. Two new blouses. A navy wrap dress I had bought years ago because it skimmed instead of clung. Nothing that belonged in a ballroom. Nothing that would survive a photograph next to Harvey Carlos.Seth’s voice arrived on cue.Cover up, Daisy. You’re prettier when you don’t try so hard.I shut the door harder than I meant to.The doorbell rang at ten past seven.It wasn’t Seth or Beth, a delivery man with a long black garment bag and a small box. “Miss Daisy?”“Yes”“Carlos Holdings, signature required”.I signed with fingers that were not












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